JANET'S AUNT KITTY
Janet McFadden, after one searching look in Rosie's face, rushed forward
eagerly.
"I'm so glad to see you! Where have you been all this time?"
Rosie dimpled with pleasure. Wasn't it sweet of Janet not to refer to
the coldness of their last meeting? That was Janet right straight
through: always ready to be insulted on the first provocation, but just
as ready, once she knew you still loved her, to let bygones be bygones.
"Well, you see, Janet, Jackie's been sick. No, not really sick, but
sore. His back was all sunburnt. He'd been in swimming for the first
time. You know boys always go in swimming and get sunburnt the first
day. But he's all right now and I don't have to bother about him any
more."
Janet blinked in surprise and started to say something when the
expression on Rosie's face checked her. She paused, then exclaimed,
rather fatuously: "How sweet Geraldine looks!"
"Doesn't she!" Rosie spoke enthusiastically. "Say, Janet, don't you
think she's a nice baby?"
"I do indeed!" Janet wagged her head impressively. "You know yourself I
always did think she was a nice baby and I never could make out why you
didn't like her more."
"Janet McFadden, how you talk! Of course I like Geraldine! I love her!"
Rosie bounced the baby-carriage vigorously and made direct appeal to
Geraldine herself: "Doesn't sister Rosie love her own baby? Of course
she does! And she's going to take care of her all summer, isn't she?
because ma's too busy."
"Why, Rosie!" Janet began.
Rosie faced square about and with one look challenged Janet to show
further surprise.
"Why--why, isn't that nice!" Janet murmured meekly.
"Of course it's nice and we're going to Boulevard Place every afternoon,
aren't we, Geraldine? We're going there now and Janet can come with us
if she wants to."
Janet wanted to, but she had to refuse. "I can't today, Rosie. I've got
to help my mother. But tomorrow afternoon--will you stop for me then?
I'll expect you."
In this way friendship was restored. Not having to bear the strain of an
insistent questioning from Janet, its restoration was simple. Something
had occurred to change Rosie's attitude in regard to her small brother
and sister and upon this something she was not disposed, evidently, to
be communicative. Well, Janet was not inquisitive. Besides, even if
this subject of conversation was taboo, conversation was not in any
danger of early extinction. When together, Janet and Rosie always
talked--not perfunctorily, either, but with much emphasis and many
headshakings. Goodness me, they never stopped talking! After only a few
hours' separation, each had a hundred things to tell the other. By the
very next day Janet had a bit of news, that was to furnish them an
exciting topic for weeks to come.
When Rosie called for Janet the following afternoon, her knock was
answered by Tom Sullivan, who instantly blushed a glowing crimson and
with difficulty stammered: "Yes, Janet's home. Come on in."
Rosie found Janet and her mother entertaining Mrs. Sullivan, who was
Dave McFadden's sister and therefore Janet's aunt.
At sight of Rosie, Mrs. Sullivan exclaimed gushingly: "If there ain't
Rosie O'Brien! You sweet thing! Come right here and kiss me!"
Rosie had to submit to the caress although she knew it was intended as a
slight to Janet. That was one of Aunt Kitty Sullivan's little ways. Aunt
Kitty was a fat, smiling, middle-aged woman who was going through life
under the delusion that her face still retained the empty prettiness of
its youth.
"I was just a-saying to Janet," Aunt Kitty began, "that she ought to be
making herself more attractive. As long as she goes about looking like
a scarecrow, she never will have a beau! Ain't that right, Rosie?"
Aunt Kitty smiled upon Rosie that meaning smile with which one conscious
beauty appeals to another. Rosie did not respond to it. From the bottom
of her heart she despised Aunt Kitty for the persistence with which she
tormented Janet. When Rosie came in her tirade must have been going on
for some time, for Janet looked tense and angry and her mother badly
flustered.
Mrs. McFadden, hard-worked and worn and shabby, could not openly resent
her sister-in-law's little pleasantries, for Kitty Sullivan was the
prosperous member of the family. The chance that had given her a sober,
frugal, industrious husband had also given her a certain moral
superiority over all women whose husbands were not sober or frugal or
industrious. Mrs. McFadden did not question this superiority; she
accepted it humbly. Far be it from her, poor drudge that she was, to
dispute the words of a woman who could afford good clothes and a weekly
ticket to the matinee. So all she said now in Janet's defence was:
"Kitty, I wish you wouldn't be putting such notions into Janet's head.
She's too young to have beaux."
"Too young!" scoffed Mrs. Sullivan. "I guess I begun havin' beaux when I
was a good deal younger than Janet is now! Why, nowadays a girl can't
begin too young havin' beaux, or the first thing she knows she's an old
maid! Ain't that right, Rosie?"
Rosie turned her head away, mumbling some unintelligible answer. Tom,
blushing until his freckles were all hidden, came to her rescue.
"Aw, now, Ma, why can't you let up on Janet? She ain't done nuthin' to
you!"
Mrs. Sullivan looked at her son reprovingly. "Tom Sullivan, you just
mind your own business! What I'm saying is for Janet's own good. And I
must say, Mary McFadden, it's your fault, too. You ought to be dressing
Janet better now that she's getting big."
Mrs. McFadden sighed apologetically. "I'm sure I dress her as well as I
can, Kitty."
"Well, then, all I got to say is you must be a mighty poor manager, with
Dave making good money and you yourself working every day!" As she
finished, Mrs. Sullivan smiled and dimpled with all the malicious
triumph of a precocious child.
Rosie felt shamed and troubled. To Mrs. Sullivan's taunt there was one
answer that everybody present knew, but that neither Mary McFadden nor
Janet would ever give, and that Rosie, as an outsider, could not give.
But even so, Mrs. Sullivan was not to go unanswered. Tom, blushing with
mortification, jumped to his feet.
"Ma, you're the limit! You ought to be ashamed o' yourself! Uncle Dave
makes good money, does he? Yes, and he boozes every cent of it, and
Aunt Mary here has got to work like a nigger to pay the rent and keep
herself and Janet, and you know it, too."
"Tom Sullivan, you shut up!" Mrs. Sullivan's voice rose to an angry
scream. "How dare you interrupt me! You deserve a good thrashing, you
do, and you're goin' to get it, too, as soon as your father comes
home!... Dave boozes, does he? Well, all I got to say is this: he never
boozed before he got married, and if he boozes now it's a mighty queer
thing!"
Rosie stood up to go. "Say, Janet, you promised to come with me this
afternoon. Get your hat."
"Yes," advised Mrs. Sullivan; "put on that old black sailor hat that
makes you look like a guy. Mary McFadden, if I had a girl I wouldn't let
her out on the street in a hat like that!"
Rosie and Janet started off and Tom called after them: "Wait a minute!
I'll come, too!"
"No, you don't!" his mother ordered. "You stay right where you are! You
don't get out o' my sight till I hand you over to your dad!"
Once safe on the street, Rosie put a sympathetic arm about Janet's
shoulder. "Even if she is your aunt, Janet, I think she's low-down and I
hate her!"
"Pooh!" Janet tossed her head in fine scorn. "In my opinion she ain't
worth hating! She ain't nuthin'! I consider her beneath my contemp'!
The truth is, Rosie, I don't mind her buzzin' around any more than I
do a fly! She'd die if she didn't talk; so I say let her talk. If she
couldn't she'd probably do something worse. My mother feels the same
way. We get tired of her sometimes, but we stand her because she's my
dad's own sister.... Of course, though, some of the things she says is
perfectly true. I ain't pretty. You are, Rosie, but I ain't and I know
it, and that's all there is about it."
Janet spread out her hands in simple candour and glanced at her friend.
Then, involuntarily, she gave a little sigh. It was not a sigh of envy.
She really did accept as a matter of fact that she herself was not
pretty and that Rosie was. Where Rosie was plump and rounded and
graceful, Janet knew that she was flat and long and lanky. Her arms were
long, her fingers were long, her face was long. Her dark hair, too, was
long, but with nothing in texture or colour to recommend it. She wore it
pulled straight from her forehead and hanging behind in two stiff
plaits.
With her old black hat, her colourless face, her faded clothes, she gave
the impression of a very shabby, serious little person. And she was
both. Rosie, on the other hand, though as poorly dressed, seemed
anything but shabby and serious, for she was all life and colour, like
some little roadside flower, which, in spite of dusty leaves, raises
aloft a bright, fresh bloom.
Janet might bravely dismiss her aunt with a wave of the hand, but Rosie
insisted upon repeating herself.
"I don't care what you say, Janet, I think she's low-down the way she
talks to you and your mother! Now Tom's nice. That was fine the way he
spoke up. You don't think his father'll lick him, do you?"
"Uncle Matt?" Janet laughed. "Nev-er! Uncle Matt's just crazy about Tom.
They're like two kids when they're together. And that reminds me,
Rosie--goodness me, I was forgetting all about it!" Janet paused to give
full flavour to her bit of news. "What Tom came over for this afternoon
was to tell me that Uncle Matt has promised to give him and me tickets
for the Traction Boys' Picnic--you know it's coming in two weeks
now--and Tom says he's going to try to beg another ticket for you!"
"Is he really, Janet? Now isn't he just too kind!"
"Kind? I should say he is! He's bashful, of course, and people laugh at
him because he's got red hair, but he's just as generous as he can be.
You remember last year I went with him, too. Why, do you know, last year
his father had six customers who bought their tickets and then turned
right around and said: 'But we can't go, so you just give these tickets
to some one who can.' Uncle Matt had enough tickets for the whole family
and two more besides. He sold those two and give us all ice-cream sodas
on them."
"Did he really, Janet! That just proves what I always say: in some ways
I'd much rather have my father be a conductor than a motorman. A
motorman never gets a chance at a ticket. I'm glad Jarge Riley's a
conductor. I bet he sells a good many, don't you?"
"Of course he will, Rosie! I hadn't thought of Jarge. If a customer
gives Jarge back a ticket, of course he'll pass it on to you--I know he
will. Gee, Rosie, you're lucky to have a fella like Jarge Riley boarding
with you. He sure is a dandy."
To this last Rosie agreed readily enough but on the priority of her
claim to any tickets she set Janet right. "If he gets only a couple,
he'll give Ellen first chance."
Janet sighed. "Say, Rosie, is he still dead gone on Ellen?"
Rosie sighed, too, and nodded. "Ain't it funny with a fella that's got
so much sense about other things?"
Janet sighed again. "I don't like to say anything against Ellen, because
she's your sister, but, as you say yourself, it certainly is funny."